Literatureעירית עמיאל

Irit Amiel

Irit Amiel was a Polish-born Israeli poet, writer and translator who wrote and translated in Hebrew and Polish.

1931 to 2021Holocaust poetry and proseHebrew to Polish literary translationTwo Nike Award nominations

Born: 5 May 1931, Częstochowa
Died: 16 February 2021, Ramat Gan
Occupation: poet, writer, translator
Education: Open University of Israel

Irit Amiel was born in 1931 in Częstochowa

Irit Amiel was born Irena Librowicz in Częstochowa, Poland, in 1931. Her parents, Leon and Jentla Librowicz, came from an assimilated Jewish family that ran a fabric shop.

During World War II the family was sent to the Częstochowa ghetto. In 1942 her parents smuggled her out, and she survived under a false identity with Aryan papers. Her parents were murdered at Treblinka.

After meeting Yitzhak Zuckerman, she left Poland with the Bricha movement. She reached Haifa in December 1947 on an immigrant ship. She lived at kibbutz Beit HaShita and then at kibbutz Palmachim, married Eliyahu Amiel in 1953, and settled in Ramat Gan.

She studied at the Open University and studied translation at Beit Berl from 1981 to 1985. Her first book, a Hebrew poetry collection, came out in 1994. Her prose books in Polish were twice nominated for the Nike Literary Award, and she translated works by Dan Pagis and Hanoch Levin into Polish.

In 2014 the city of Częstochowa gave her an award for her cultural work. She died on 16 February 2021 and was buried at the Kiryat Shaul Cemetery.